The creation and storage of digitized data has proliferated in recent years. Accordingly, techniques and mechanisms that facilitate efficient and cost effective storage of large amounts of digital data are common today. For example, a cluster network environment of nodes may be implemented as a data storage system to facilitate the creation, storage, retrieval, and/or processing of digital data. Such a data storage system may be implemented using a variety of storage architectures, such as a network-attached storage (NAS) environment, a storage area network (SAN), a direct-attached storage environment, and combinations thereof. The foregoing data storage systems may comprise one or more data storage devices configured to store digital data within data volumes.
Digital data stored by data storage systems may be frequently migrated within the data storage system and/or between data storage systems during normal operation. For example, when one or more users desire to access or download files, a portion or even the entire contents of a data volume may be sent across the network to be accessed by the user. Such communications may take place between multiple nodes of the storage network, between a storage array and one or more nodes, between other communication devices on the network (e.g. switches and relays), etc.
Issues arise in such storage networks, however, because the multiple network devices which are present in the storage network may utilize differing protocols to communicate data. For example, communications between one or more devices may utilize fibre channel (FC) protocols, Ethernet protocols, fibre channel over Ethernet (FCoE) protocols, Small Computer Systems Interface (SCSI) protocol encapsulated over TCP (iSCSI) (SCSI/iSCSI) protocols, etc.
Generally, a storage network must utilize multiple input/output (I/O) ports to handle each of these protocols. For example, a device in a storage network may need separate I/O ports to utilize an Ethernet connection and a FC connection. In fact, even with I/O ports that implement FCoE, such ports cannot be utilized to receive a communication which utilizes an FC protocol. Accordingly, when multiple protocols are present within a storage network, additional hardware and communication ports must be utilized and maintained to support these distinct protocols.